Year of the Dragon

Most Chinese restaurants drive me nuts. Take the one a block away from our house. I mean take it, please! The menu looks exactly the same as 50 other Chinese restaurants in our area and features precisely the same dishes: Wonton Soup, Egg Rolls, Fried Rice, Egg Foo Young, General Tso’s Chicken and the list goes on. To me this is culinary plagiarism and, although these eateries are independently owned, they could pass for McDonald franchises with an oriental twist, since the food tastes about the same no matter which one you visit. Several years ago, I was introduced to Ala Shanghai in Latham and for the past three years a group of us have gathered there around the Chinese New Year to be fed like royalty. This year our numbers swelled to 25 and we occupied three large tables. Owners Lanny and Connie Lau oversee a restaurant that showcases authentic dishes from the regions around Shanghai. These dishes bear little resemblance to the food served at the run of the mill Chinese restaurant and are notable for a variety of textures, flavors (some mild and delicate, some with a touch of heat) and colorful presentations. My personal favorites this year were the soup dumplings (how they get the soup inside the dumpling is a well-kept secret), the lobster grandma’s style with salty egg yolk and the crispy whole fish. As the putative Chinese expression goes “A picture is worth a thousand words”, so here are some mouthwatering photos.

Steamed Crab & Pork Soup Dumplings

Crispy Whole Fish with Pine Nuts

Golden Lobster Grandma's Style

Crispy Whole Fish - Did I Mention That Red is the Color of Good Luck?

Naturally, beverages were required during the course of our meal, and we were each instructed to bring a bottle or two of wine. Astute readers of our blog are well aware that the only wines compatible with oriental cuisine are Rieslings (with maybe an occasional Gewürztraminer or an Austrian Gruner Veltliner thrown into the mix). I tasted a white Burgundy which was disastrous with this meal. Rieslings have the perfect combination of residual sugar, offset with sufficient acid, to compliment this cuisine. I brought a fairly inexpensive ($14) 2009 semi-dry Riesling from Hermann Wiemer and one of my very wine knowledgable friends told me it could have passed for a German Spatlese. High praise indeed!